Finding Voice: Telling Our Own Stories

I seem to have been spending quite a bit of
time lately urging other activist friends to write more.
Many already are. And I regularly ask myself why I write.

We need more people who write for social movements in
struggle, are actively engaged in organising in those
movements, and who take the same political risks as others.
We also need more quality research explicitly directed by
and accountable to people in struggle.

We should not
underestimate the role of research and writing in our
campaigns. But these resources must meet the needs of
communities, activists and organisers daily engaged in
specific struggles. We should not confuse the production of
yet more information with education for empowerment and
liberation.

Finding space and time to reflect upon and
evaluate our tactics, strategies, processes, goals and
visions, our successes and failures, victories and setbacks
can be hard in day-to-day organising that is often
all-consuming. But it is so vital.

Who else can better
articulate the complexities, contradictions and challenges
that lie within our organisations and movements which
arguably need as much attention as the institutions and
forces which we mobilise against? Who better to articulate
the alternatives to the neoliberal agenda which are already
being built. And who better to make the links and
connections between global and local struggles and
injustices?

My motivation to start writing more came
equally from frustrations with much “alternative” media and
NGO literature - and seeing whose voices and which views are
heard and valued and which silenced - as from the slop
served by corporate media and official propagandists. Often
what was out there did not reflect the realities of the work
I was doing or what other people were telling me about their
struggles. I started writing as one other way to contribute
to movements for change.

In an earlier ZNet commentary
(All this Civil Society talk takes us nowhere, 13/01/02) I
wrote about the dangerous separation of the “brain and
brawn” of the “anti-globalisation movement”.

Unfortunately, within many movements and networks
committed to social change, it has often been implicitly
(and rather arrogantly) assumed that people organising
militant actions have little or no analysis, theoretical
understanding or worthwhile things to say, unlike more
“respectable” NGO policy people, lobbyists, and
commentators. Such elitism and the cults of personality and
power which develop around “experts” have no place in
movements for social justice.

Moreover, many NGOs which
have the material resources and organisational
infrastructure to regularly produce research documents and
literature studiously avoid confronting fundamental issues
like imperialism, capitalism or colonisation in any
substantive way. Perhaps that is hardly surprising – there
is little funding available for organisations which take
explicitly anti-colonial, anti-capitalist and
anti-imperialist standpoints by comparison with those
advancing more reformist – or at least, ambiguous
-positions.

In their tiresome territorial turf wars to
brand themselves as the authoritative ‘alternative’ voice,
they can be as condescending and patronising to the rest of
us as those institutions and actors which they are pitted
against. Consciously or inadvertently, they often reproduce
or reinforce the same imperial, patriarchal, racist and
class relations which underpin the world we live in. We
talk, you listen. You organise, and we’ll write about it.

Cul-de-sacs of convenience and comfort are frequently
constructed which exclude any focus on the issues of
imperialism and colonialism, often couched in the language
of “reality” and pragmatism. They invite people to question
things up to a certain point, but fail to grapple with, and
often obscure, the root causes of injustice.

In his
critique of international NGOs (in Globalisation Unmasked:
Imperialism in the 21st Century), James Petras writes that
they frequently act as “intellectual policemen who define
“acceptable” research, distribute research funds and filter
out topics and perspectives that project a class analysis
and struggle perspective.” When their essentially reformist
agendas threaten to set the parameters of accepted debate in
the “alternative” world about a particular issue, how do we
engage and confront them?

How do we challenge the subtle
and not-so-subtle ways in which many more powerful NGOs seek
to dominate discourse on issues like globalisation? How do
we move the analysis forward? What responsibility and what
tools do we have, drawn from our popular education and
mobilization work, to challenge this situation?

What
often strikes me is that ideas, concerns and arguments which
seem basic and hardly original, are not being articulated
and shared outside of a small circle of friends and
comrades. Putting these into words can be a powerful way to
move discussion forward and build bridges with others with
similar concerns.

I have been amazed at how well ZNet
articles like the one I wrote on civil society, and last
August’s “Bringing It All Back Home: Anti Globalisation
Activism cannot ignore Colonial Realities” have been
received, even though it seems that quite a few of us have
been saying these kinds of things for many years.

The
work of identifying linkages, articulating and building a
larger vision linking local and global issues, for example,
building campaigns which expose the connections between
neoliberalism, racist immigration policies, colonial laws
and culture which continue to subjugate Indigenous Peoples,
is an important project. But by comparison with the analyses
of corporate power and the demise of “democracy”, few are
writing about these issues. The organising in our
communities needs to go hand in hand with a conscious focus
on framing the debate and the issues at a more conceptual
level.

We cannot deal with every issue at once in our
campaigns and mobilizations – but we can link our actions
and campaign work to an analysis based on broader
understandings. There is a mutually-reinforcing relationship
between mobilising on local concerns and contextualising
what we do in light of broader national or global questions.

Why should it be left up to detached academics,
progressive social commentators, professional NGO policy
analysts and investigative journalists who occupy positions
of relative privilege, to frame debates and analysis? They
may well be fine people, with important insights. And we
need them. But is what they have to say and write inherently
any more legitimate, credible and valid than people who put
themselves on the line on a daily basis? Or people who have
no choice in being on the frontlines of struggles?

The
high value placed on the written word, and the exalted place
we give to those who write is highly problematic. Not
everyone is a writer, and the way in which “alternative”
organisations, especially in the North, value and validate
those who write over those who do not is highly problematic.
Some of the sharpest critical thinking and analyses come
from people who have never written and some who cannot
write. Where and how are their voices and ideas valued? We
need to examine and confront the tendency of alternative
movements to attribute higher values and status to those of
us who write than those who don’t, won’t or can’t.

Another problem is the continued dominance of the English
language which often serves as a filter. It largely
determines whose voices we hear, articles and reports we
read, and who from movements in the non-English-speaking
majority of the world gets exposed to debates beyond their
country or region.

We are drowning in information,
overwhelmed by the enormity of the injustices that we seek
to overcome, and the urgent need to act immediately. Having
the opportunity to step back, talk with comrades, assess
where we are at, and share our experiences often gets put
farther down the priority list than organising the next
demonstration or public meeting, or getting the next
leaflet, poster or flyer out.

Nonetheless, writing can be
an essential tool in crystallizing arguments and concerns
that are not likely to be otherwise addressed and can play a
role as a catalyst for change.

Combining organising,
intense campaign and mobilization work with writing is not
easy. It is often a frustrating juggling act. Nonetheless I
think it is very important that more of us try.

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